In 1998, Dana (missdanaj@geocities.com) posted this love spell to usenet:

You need green paper, vandal root, and dirt from a graveyard. You write your name and the guy's name on the paper, put the vandal root and graveyard dirt in the center of the paper, wrap it up and leave it under your bed.

I got this spell from a spell book published by Baron Blanc in Sydney, Australia. Please understand that (in the book's words) "it is one of the most powerful love spells and should be undertaken only after other love spells have failed. Not for the faint hearted."

Miss Dana's post provoked long discussions in usenet concerning why someone would use Graveyard Dirt in a love spell, so i'd like to add some commentary:

I myself have never used Graveyard Dirt love spells, but i can tell you that they do have quite a bit of historical basis behind they and there are people who say that such love spells have worked for them. The trouble is, the spell as related in Miss Dana's book just calls for any old Graveyard Dirt, and the way i was taught, that is not quite right.

The man who gave me my version of the Graveyard Dirt Love Spell -- and he was no "Baron" from Australia, but an African-American candle store owner in Oakland, California, back in the 1960s -- said to use the dirt from the grave of someone who had loved you in life. He said, "Your grandmother, mother, father; your lover, husband, or wife who passed on before you -- you get dirt from THEIR grave only, and not from anywhere on the grave either, but from over the HEART."

When i told him that all my relatives who had died were buried far away and i could not get to their graves, he said, "Everybody has had at least ONE person to love them, even if it was just a little yellow spotted dog." I told him i had once had a cat who loved me and that i knew where she was buried. "Then you can use the dirt from her grave," he said. I never did it, though.

The idea behind Graveyard Dirt Love Spells is that the dead one who loved you will work on the live one who does not love you yet, and will set their mind to thinking of you. That's why you want the dirt from over the heart of one who loved you -- you want their spirit on your side, working on the mind of the one you love.

The vandal root called for in one version of this love spell is a root with alleged powers to aid in establishing contact with the dead and it is said to create spiritual contacts with the other world. This reinforces the idea that the Graveyard Dirt should be from a grave that holds meaning for you, not just any old grave.

In the 1930s, Harry M. Hyatt collected information about hoodoo from 1,600 African-American informants, and one of them gave him a variation of the Graveyard Dirt Love Spells. It is simpler than Baron Blanc's version, in that it does not include the Vandal Root, but it is also much more direct because rather than hide the materials under your bed, as Baron Blanc suggests, you sprinkle the Graveyard Dirt on yourself when you go to be near the one whom you wish to attract. This is the way i was told to do it, too.

You can find the 1930s version of the spell collected by Harry M. Hyatt -- in the informant's own words -- on my web page about Goofer Dust. It is spell #659, but i suggest that you read the entire page first; don't just skip to that part.

Incidentally, the person who gave this love spell to Hyatt noted that it only works as long as you keep using the Graveyard Dirt. In other words, it only works while the spirit of the dead person is helping you. A more coercive love spell using Goofer Dust or Graveyard Dirt to force a person to love you is called "Love Me or Die" -- and it does not specify that the dirt must come from the grave of a loved one.

I believe that the origin of these love spells lies in African religious beliefs about the dead, especially those that came from the Congo, where contact with the spirits of the dead is strongly emphasized and their help is sought on behalf of the living.

So, you see, these are very unusual love spells. They are for a certain kind of love, and they are not magic spells that everyone could or should use, but they do have a long and legitimate history in African-American folk-magic.